Capital murder suspect found dead in suspected suicide at Trussville home

A Trussville man set to go to trial on a capital murder charge was found dead in his home.

Jonathan Burns, 33, died Thursday afternoon. Trussville police and firefighters responded to his home on Morris Circle at 4:30 p.m. after his father found him unresponsive. The investigation is ongoing, but Burns' died from a gunshot wound that is believed to have been self-inflicted.

Burns' was scheduled to go to trial in May in the 2015 shooting death of 29-year-old Kenneth Scott.

The shooting happened just before 9:30 a.m. that Saturday morning in an alley in the 500 block of 41st Street in the Tom Brown Village public housing community in north Avondale. Authorities said Scott had just left a service station and was standing outside of his vehicle conducting an unknown transaction with another man - later identified as Burns - when that man shot him. It happened at 9:24 a.m.

Scott, with a gunshot wound to the stomach, was taken to UAB Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 9:50 a.m.

Witnesses told police the shooter was standing over Scott's body holding a gun in his hand. Scott had been shot in the stomach. The shooter fled the scene in a maroon Ford F150 truck. An affidavit in the case states that Burns was in the course of committing the theft of money or a controlled substance when he killed Scott with a shotgun.

Burns was charged with capital murder because he went through the victim's pockets after the shooting. The suspect was initially released on $50,000 bond which angered Scott's family. That bond was later revoked, and then again reinstated.